On the 8th May
1559, Queen Elizabeth I gave her approval to the Acts of Uniformity and
Supremacy which had been passed by Parliament on the 29th April. The Act of
Uniformity made Protestantism England’s official faith, established a form of
worship which is still followed in English Parish churches today and showed the
country that Elizabeth was bent on following a middle road where religion was
concerned.

The Middle Road
of Faith

Elizabeth I was
a keen Protestant, having been converted by her stepmother Catherine Parr, a
zealous reformer, in her formative years in the 1540s, however, she was no
Puritan or Calvinist and was against clerical marriage.

Elizabeth had
seen the damage that religious divisions had done to the country in her
half-sister Mary’s reign and was intent on bringing peace and tolerance to
England once again. Although she herself had a Protestant faith, she wanted to
create a religious settlement that Protestants and Catholics would be happy
with, a halfway house, a middle of the road settlement that would allow her
subjects to live in peace with each other but which would also allow her to
restore Protestantism as the country’s faith and restore royal supremacy so she
could be head of the Church. Elizabeth declared that she had “no desire to make
windows into men’s souls” and she believed that “there is only one Christ,
Jesus, one faith, all else is a dispute over trifles”, and her religious
settlement was her attempt to show this. Both Calvinists and Catholics
criticised the Act, but Elizabeth knew the importance of stability and knew
that this religious settlement would achieve it.

It made Mary I’s repeal
of Edward VI’s Act for Uniformity and Administration of the Sacraments null and
void – Elizabeth’s Act of Uniformity reinstated the use of the English Book of
Common Prayer from 1552. All services were to follow the order of service set
out in this book and be in English.

Royal Supremacy –
Elizabeth was made Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

The Catholic mass was
banned.

Everybody was to attend
church on Sundays and holy days or be fined 12 pence.

Measures or punishments
for clergymen who did not stick to the Act and the Book of Common Prayer.

Church ornaments – “that
such ornaments of the church, and of the ministers thereof, shall be retained
and be in use, as was in the Church of England, by authority of Parliament, in
the second year of the reign of King Edward VI”.

Although many
people see Elizabeth’s religious settlement as too middle of the road and a
sign that Elizabeth’s faith was weak, I think that Elizabeth had to set her
personal faith and feelings to one side and act in the best interests of her
country. The Marian persecutions and the way that England had bounced from
Protestantism to Catholicism had caused much unrest and instability, and
Elizabeth had to deal with this. Obviously she did have to take certain
measures against the Catholics later in her reign, when she was dealing with
plots against her and imminent invasion from Spain, but the start of her reign
was all about moderation and tolerance and I applaud her for that. I cannot and
will not question her faith, that was personal to her, but she was a woman who
had debated evangelical ideas with Catherine Parr, had translated Margaret of
Navarre’s evangelical work, “Le miroir de l’ame pecheresse” (The Mirror of the
Sinful Soul), at the age of 11 and had risked her life in Mary I’s reign by
continually missing mass. She was a woman with a true and real faith.